Acer seized second place in worldwide computer sales in 2009, thanks, in part, to strong sales of its Acer Aspire One netbook. (Source: Techshout.com)

Taiwanese company says American vendors can't keep up with aggressive pricing

Hewlett Packard, the world's largest computer maker, and Dell,
third place in world sales, are powerful players. However, both
-- especially
Dell – suffered during the recession. Meanwhile Taiwanese
OEMs ASUSTek and Acer, whose sales were heavily comprised of
low-priced netbooks (the Eee PC and Aspire One, respectively), posted
impressive growth.

Acer founder Stan Shih, who helped grow his
company into Taiwan's top computer-maker, said this differential
response is merely a
sign of trouble to come for American companies.

He is
quoted by Taipei-based Commercial Times as saying, "The
trend for low-priced computers will last for the coming years.
But US computer makers just don't know how to put such products on
the market... US computer brands may disappear over the next 20
years, just like what happened to US television brands."

Acer's
talk may sound like the same kind of tired corporate rhetoric that
executives often spout off. However, one must consider Acer's
impressive performance -- in 2009 the company passed
Dell to become the world's second largest computer maker, and
according to Digitimes, it is projected to in 2011 pass HP to
become the world's top computer maker. That progress has been
heavily driven by aggressively priced PCs, especially netbooks.

One
odd man out is Apple, Inc. Apple, a U.S. firm based out of
Cupertino, California, traditionally prices its notebooks well above
even HP or Dell, let alone the Taiwanese. However, it continues
to grow
and gain marketshare, perhaps proving that Acer's prediction of
the American computer maker's demise premature.

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I know very well how servers are much bigger money. IBM has survived (and even come out strong and better) the Great Depression, multiple smaller ones, and even this most recent one. It's my misfortune to assume you'd all be smart enough to watch them and realize that this would eventually happen, when they dropped their PC/Laptop division in 2005. Welcome to 5 years ago.

This is about the companies not one line a company makes... PC is small market... Then you have Notebook, netbook, Server, Cad systems, Then networking equipment (access point, cable, routers, racks, jack, and a few hundred other items), then you have printers....PC are very small percentage of these companies business (not to be ignored, but not major of their business).

What is being missed here and by most Asian companies... Asian are new to the world of capitalism, and American has not run a clean capitalistic society in a long time. If the government keeps their nose out of Dell, HP, and whom ever else they will either become stronger or go out of business. Most of the time it is great for a big company like Dell to go under. Smaller but more efficient companies will get more business and grow. In the longer run the people will have a better product for their money. If the government interferes it will only keeps these badly wounded monster sizes companies alive and not well. Hurting the end user because quality will suffer compared to the smaller guy who is trying to make a mark and also preventing these smaller guy from growing and become the next best computer company. The USA Auto industry is and has experienced this... Ford is so far the company make the best strides to stay in business, time will tell, however if you let capitalism run it's course the best will come out on top. If you allow outside interference, well, it's never really a good thing.

The Acer exec is forecasting the demise of HP, Dell, etc..The article was about computers, which, last time I checked, servers fell under that category. Not to mention that HP and Dell make a great deal of money from their server products. That means Acer does not compete with them in that market, so saying these companies will fail is really not taking the whole picture into account.

You'd be surprised how things have changed. Currently, some companies in the US OUTBID India for tech support contracts. I would know. I worked for one. Probably the worst year of my life. They paid us less than what you would get at a supermarket and they timed your breaks and yelled at you for being over 10 seconds. Ajilon is the company if anyone cares.